


the real deal

by rjosettes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/M, Knotting, Mates, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/pseuds/rjosettes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Allison,” Melissa says, and Allison feels for just a moment soothed under the cool and calm of her voice. “Sweetheart, you've gone into heat. Your father's here to wait with you while we find Stiles. We have a room all set for you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the real deal

**Author's Note:**

> For the Teen Wolf Rarepair Exchange! A hearty thank you to my girlfriend/put-upon beta, who edited down to the very last seconds with me. 
> 
> On the incest: there is definitely sexual tension between Allison and her father, but the only time that he touches her in a way that could be construed as sexual is before the sex and is not meant to be stimulating for either of them.
> 
> There's also a brief warning that is slightly spoiler-y that I'll stick in the bottom notes for anyone concerned.

Allison doesn't wake up. There are voices and an oppressive, muggy heat but the fog in her brain is dreamlike, obscuring. She's asleep. She must be.

“She's burning up,” one of the voices says, tinny and grating, too loud. Allison nods in exasperation – yes, it's hot, shut up. Her mouth doesn't work, though, and her body doesn't want to cooperate with her, either. Everything is drowned in molten syrup, and Allison feels it everywhere, sticky, heavy, and slowing. The agonizing tone of the voice from above carries through sharp and clear. “The sheets are soaked, should we do something?”

“She's in heat.” Allison tries to shake her head, no, not heat. Pseudoheat. She remembers now, though it's fuzzy-edged. She'd been on edge all day, unable to sit still through her father's class and fussy at dinner, pushing her food around her plate. Lydia had frowned at her knowingly, and it had been so condescending, so unbelievably arrogant and unnecessary. She'd gone to bed angry and tossed for hours before she'd finally slipped into fitful sleep. And that's where she is now, but her dreams don't seem to want to let her rest. “Go and get Madam McCall and the headmistress. I'll sit with her.” The second voice doesn't make Allison want to plug her ears and whine quite so much, but she wants to be left in peace. Skin presses against her forehead and she jerks sluggishly away, unable to move fast enough to lose contact. It slips in the sweat on her brow but holds firm. The gesture's familiarity floats at the edges of her consciousness until she remembers – her mother's hand against her, checking for temperature when she'd come down with dragon pox.

She gasps in the sweltering air and calls for her father, forces his name out with her eyes shut and her fists curled into the sheets. Her father will know what to do now, the way her mother always had. He'll fix it. Even in a dream, even in a nightmare, he'll have the answer. The fog rolls in again and she sinks further into the burning mist of it, waiting. Hoping.

The next time it clears, it's to the sound of a voice that rolls over her, rich and deep, enveloping. For a moment, the words themselves don't matter; only the sound resonating in her chest draws her towards the surface. She's awake now, truly, but her eyelids are heavy still. The sheets beneath her back are barely damp and slightly cooler than they had been before.

“I'm giving you permission right now. If I need to sign some sort of papers, authorize it officially, I will, just put her to sleep!”

“Chris...”

Two familiar voices. Her father's, raised and furious. Melissa's, apprehensive. She's in the infirmary. Her throat is scorched and protesting, but she clears it. “Am I sick?” she croaks, eyes fluttering open and rapidly blinking closed at the bright light overhead. “Nox,” she tries, needing the dark. “Nox, nox, nox!” The red-gold burns at the back of her eyelids until the sound of shattering glass breaks through the room.

“Allison,” Melissa says, and Allison feels for just a moment soothed under the cool and calm of her voice. “Sweetheart, you've gone into heat. Your father's here to wait with you while we find Stiles. We have a room all set for you.”

Every sentence pierces Allison's gut anew, arrow after arrow finding it's mark and sticking. This isn't pseudoheat. She'd thought they were only getting worse, building intensity. She doesn't speak to any omegas here at school, and it's not as if her mother is around to tell her what is and isn't usual. They'd always told her they'd worsen with time and become more frequent before she ripened into full heat sometime after she finished school. It's only spring of sixth year and the fever setting into her bones isn't a trial run. Someone is seeking out an alpha – her alpha, she reminds herself for the hundredth time – to take her away to mate. To mate here at school, before she even reaches her final year, before she has a chance to finish all the things her father had wanted for her before he knew.

Her father is angry now. He's angry at her or Melissa or Stiles. He’s always angry at Stiles. “He can't even take care of being where he's supposed to be in the middle of the night. Any other student out of bed this late and they'd be stuck in detention, not treated to a few days off school to have sex. He's irresponsible. If you won't give Allison the potion, I will.”

“Her body isn't working the way it normally would, Professor Argent.” Melissa's voice has gone cold and professional, as close as she ever comes to unpleasant. “I'd bet anything she hasn't eaten today. It'd be useless. The potion, too. Her metabolism would burn it up so fast it'd be like nothing ever happened, or else she'd retch it right back up. Your daughter is /ill/, Professor. I'd think you'd remember the details. It hasn't been that long since-”

“You're telling me it's impossible to sedate her.”

“Nearly impossible, and dangerous even if it were possible. It's in her best interests to-”

“Let some scrawny halfblood knot her in an abandoned classroom?” Already flushed from head to toe, Allison feels her cheeks color even further. She feels as though anyone who touched her would pull away scalded. Melissa is touching her, though, gentle hands and cool cloth against her skin. It's only then that she realizes she's been stripped beneath the sheets. The school nurse is mopping up her sweat and, oh, god, who knows what else. The stifling heat and her embarrassment play tug-of-war for a moment before she pulls the sheets in tighter. “She's got an entire year of school left after this. I'm not sending her away pregnant and saddled with a troublemaker for the rest of her life.”

The light is dim when Allison opens her eyes. The crystal candelabra that hovered over her bed is in pieces on the floor, shards radiating out from where her father stands. The wrinkles of his forehead look deeper, more pronounced, and the sweet little crinkles around his eyes are nowhere to be found in his dour expression. Madam McCall is standing her ground, though, hands on her hips as if she's about to deliver a lecture to him the same way she'd deliver one to her own son or a reckless student. The whole picture is surreal and muted, like her sight has been dialed down compared to her other senses.

“Do you think I'm stupid? The omegas of this school are under my care, and I've seen more than one go through this. They try to keep it quiet, let everyone believe that it never happens until after graduation. Allison's older, I know, her chances were higher, but I've seen it happen before the omega was even old enough for the mating ceremony. Unhooked, unbound, and writhing here in my hospital wing.”

“Then you know what to do. You know how to handle this without that sorry excuse for a mate.”

“I called the head girl, then, to take care of her. Laura Hale. The head boy and girl are betas this year, Chris. What do you expect them to do about this?” She sighs, exasperated, and when she glances back to her work on Allison's calves, she startles. “There you are, sweetheart. Only a little while longer. I'm going to have to levitate you in a minute, to get you where you need to be. There'll be a nice, soft bed and plenty of water, and -”

“No,” her dad says roughly, and Allison's toes curl. Something inside of her is spiking, insisting, pressing outward toward that scratchy, protective alpha voice. Never mind that it's her father. Never mind that his mate has come and gone. “You're not going to float her through the hallways like the dead being carried from battle.” He huffs for a moment, looks away in a gesture Allison knows as well as all of her own. He's taking a moment to think, to decide. 

“I'll carry her,” he says finally, sounding weary. “I'll carry her, just tell me where I'm going.”

“I'll come with you,” Melissa assures him. “It's not a classroom, we have a little more sense of decorum than that. If we leave now, we'll be there before Stiles, and I can help to cool her down a little beforehand?. The room will provide.”

The hand that grasps Allison’s own is firm, dry, and weathered. Her heat-slick skin tingles. “Allison,” her father's voice says, and her eyes slip shut. “Allison, I need to know if this is what you want. I'll take you where he can find you. But I need to know you can still make your own choices. You're still an Argent.”

She wants to protest. If she'd been an alpha – like her grandfather, her father, her aunt, a handful of relatives she neither sees nor cares about – then, only then, would she still be an Argent. As it is, she's in no man's land. Stiles is her alpha, but this is her first heat; if she refuses him, she's still nothing. An unclaimed omega who's turned her nose up and what magic has gifted her – a certain mate, a body whose magic twines with hers and makes her more whole. She and Stiles have barely spoken ten words to one another since the ceremony before Christmas holiday. They don't have the makings of a friendship, much less the kind of bond a pair of mates ought to build. She can say no now and be marked by it, be surely less than an Argent and, worse, less than a Stilinski. She can say yes and let her father carry her to a makeshift marriage bed, take the negligible weight of the wiry alpha atop her, and be his.

In the end, it's the deepening ache in her belly that makes the decision. She'll never tell her father that, though. She blinks until her eyes are as clear and bright as they'll get and squeezes weakly at his hand, hopes that she looks decisive. “Take me where he'll be,” she says, voice hoarse. “Take me to Stiles.”

Being lifted into her father's arms feels exactly like (and nothing at all like) when she was a little girl. She could sleep anywhere then, slipping into dreams on the rug in front of the fireplace or with her head slumped on the dinner table, having been so sure she could keep herself awake to hear just a little more of the adults talking. To have Kate smile at her as if she were finally grown up, too. As if she would have her own omega to joke about soon, a reason to keep that sly smile that danced across her aunt's mouth for herself. She fell asleep more than once in front of the floor-length mirror in the study, practicing it, and had been woken up by the gentle jostling of her father carrying her up the stairs to her bedroom. His grip was strong but light and never left a mark, no matter how tightly he held her to his chest before he settled her into bed, the tickle of his magic across her back as he used it to pull her covers aside.

Then, she had always closed her eyes to pretend. Breathed even and wished for him to believe that she was still sleeping. Whether he believed or not, he took the care to tuck her in and then, as he only did on these nights, kiss her forehead tenderly. Now, she rests limply in his hold as if she were actually deep asleep, though her eyes are fixed on his. It strikes her how unlike they are – his fair hair greyed with age and his pale eyes. Her mother used to joke that he was too beautiful to be an alpha, surely. He and Kate were of a kind, and Allison had grown up muddy-eyed and dark-haired, foreign in her own home. She'd carried no sign of him beyond his name, soon no longer to be hers, and the house she'd been shouted into when she'd arrived here, trembling with desperation. He'd carried that Gryffindor conviction and pride in her all those years, his strong alpha daughter, his heir. She's weak as a newborn kitten in his arms, head swimming, soaked between her legs where the sheets hide her. She buries her face against his throat and breathes his scent when he starts to walk. Her shame needs hiding as much as her body.

She can't keep track of the paces any more than she can the rapid tattoo of her heart in her chest, beating away in a frenzy. It frightens her and excites her all at once, despite knowing the excitement is chemical, nothing but a trick of her hormones. Her own father's presence is dizzying at the moment, so she can't imagine how powerful it will become with Stiles near, fresh and young and never mated. Not so settled as the rich musk blooming in her nose now, as she's being whisked away to a room to be pinned and fucked and tied, bred. She whimpers suddenly, eyes popping open as she looks around for Melissa.

“Protection?” she asks urgently, trying to force her vision into focusing as the scope of it bobs up and down with her father's steps. “Is there something?”

“The most reliable things all have to be taken orally,” the nurse answers regretfully. “There's something else, though. A spell. A barrier spell, like a-” She leaves off there, nervous eyes darting between Allison's face and her father's above her. “Have you ever been to a doctor? An omega's doctor?” Allison shakes once for no, clinging tightly. She was supposed to have Kate for all of her 'future alpha concerns'. Her mother should've been here to handle things when they came crashing down around their ears, when Allison knew deep down what everyone didn't see until the ceremony - hot crackle of magic untangling from her chest, vibrant blue. Omega blue. “It might be a little uncomfortable, then, but it's the best option, and it won't take more than a minute, tops.”

Melissa halts them in front of a blank space of wall. She looks absurd as she paces to and fro, muttering, as if she needs a brief conversation with herself before she decides which way they should be going. For a long moment there is nothing but the chest rising and falling against her, forming Allison's body to its shape at each breath. Just when she thinks it might be time to drift into the small solace of fitful sleep, there's a door where there hadn't been before, and Melissa ushers them in quickly, glancing this way and that to check the halls for anyone who might be looking on.

The bed she's lowered into is soft, cool, and dry, and her father's hand stays flush against the small of her back like a reassurance. A new sheet settles over and Melissa pulls the damp one from underneath, tossing it into a corner where it (literally) disappears. She can't find where the muted light of the room is coming from; there are no shadows or windows, no sign of candle nor orb. It doesn't hurt her eyes, though, and that's her most pressing concern taken care of. In the dim, she can read the worry on her dad's stoic face.

“I'm okay,” she insists with her parched voice, and in the next second there's a goblet at her lips.

“Just wet your mouth,” Melissa urges. “It won't keep you from being thirsty, but you're going to make your throat raw later if you don't get a little something down, okay?” She frets with the wisps of stringy, sweat-soaked hair that fall into Allison's face. “Chris, can you sit her up a little more? I'm going to braid that for her. It'll keep better for the next few days.” All traces of her earlier discomfort have faded, no doubt because of the cooperation she's finally getting. Allison's pulled to her father's chest again, face first into the unbuttoned collar of his night shirt, as Melissa swiftly twines her hair into something more manageable. She doesn't want to think of how filthy it will be after two or three days in this room alone with Stiles, mindless to do anything but sleep and rut.

She catches Melissa's wrist when her head is lowered to the pillow again, anxiety high enough that the urgency outweighs the floaty feeling of being cared for in this state. “Is it safe? The room? Will someone keep watch?”

Melissa pats her knee, nudging it gently until her legs are spread beneath the sheet, sticky thighs peeling away from each other. “I'm sure your father will want to arrange that for himself. If he weren't so stubborn, we would take care of it for you, yes. But you have nothing to worry about.”

“I do,” she insists. “I do, I'll be tied, we'll be tied and Stiles couldn't fight off a pixie, much less a human with magic.”

“Allison. We might've had this to worry about if you'd been an alpha, or if it were about two hundred years earlier. You're not a political threat or a royal consort. You don't need to be on lockdown.” It's more reassuring in an alpha's voice, authority almost palpably cold and clear in the aura of heat around her. “You'll be safe as houses here. It's Hogwarts. Do you think I'd have brought you here if you wouldn't be safe?”

She wants to argue, to say he'd thought she was an alpha then and it's different, but the bed shifts and Melissa is putting her hands on Allison's bare leg beneath the sheet. Her questioning sound comes out more of a terrified whimper, and her father's eyes shoot daggers at the nurse. “The spell,” she explains quickly, before she shifts her focus back to Allison. “Maybe you'd rather your dad step out for this? It's a little personal.” Allison clings tighter to his hand, shaking her head, and Melissa sighs at her. “If that's what you want. I need to ask you a few questions about your sexual activity.”

“I'm a virgin,” Allison blurts. “That should cover everything, shouldn't it?” Some alphas and omegas have sex before they even know what they'll be, she's aware of that. But at that age, Allison had expected to be an alpha, and when Lydia was having adventures on her back, Allison had been taking care of all the studying Lydia never seemed to do in front of anyone.

“I'm afraid not. It does help a little. You haven't had sex. Have you ever had anything inside? I'm not here to tell you it's wrong, trust me. A toy, or...?”

Staring straight ahead, Allison nods, biting into her lip. “My fingers,” she admits quietly, working to ignore the sudden squeeze at her hand. “Not for a long time, but.”

“Good girl,” Melissa says, almost proud, and that's nearly worse than being chastised. “Knowing your body is important. And you'll know what to expect. That's all it will be.” She holds up a pair of fingers like she's swearing an oath. “Only two, and a hand on your belly. It's quick magic, and I've done it plenty of times before. I'll be in and out, and you'll be as safe as you can be, breeding-wise. I'd hate to see a student like you go home before you've gotten rewarded for all your hard work.”

Anything is better than leaving this room with a future of tending a squalling child at her breast while her friends sit their NEWTs and move on to new lives and jobs and excitement. She nods again, more sure this time, spreading her legs farther and closing her eyes against the shame of Melissa feeling how wet she is there.

“No.”

“Chris, Allison is-”

“Of age, yes, but not legally allowed to consent to anything right now. I don't want you doing this.”

“I don't think you can agree to being bred for her, whether you're her father or not. I'm sure the headmistress will agree with me.”

Allison's hand clenches uselessly at air when it's suddenly left empty, disturbingly cold compared to the rest of her body. She shrinks into the bed, cowed by the argumentative tone in the room, and wishes for this to be over. It's something she's caught whispers of before, omegas who go sex-stupid and black out for long portions of their heat, conscious but unseeing. At this point, she'd take anything over the push and pull of her emotions and the reactions of her body, both at ridiculous heights. “Dad, it's fine, I trust Melissa.”

“No. Someone else can do this. That kind of thing shouldn't be left to a stranger, much less a beta.”

“Stiles is too young, and his magic will be unreliable with Allison so near. He's going to be nothing but hormone flood the second he steps into the room. Would you rather have him trying?”

“Then I'll do it.”

They argue a while longer, voices raised, but Allison is too busy pinning her own hips to the bed by force of will. The idea of Melissa touching her had been a necessary evil, an embarrassing means to an end that will be better for everyone. Her blood boils at the thought of her father's steady fingers, gnarled at the joints and rough from constant use, sliding into that secret place that she's kept so long to herself. She breathes and rationalizes. 'How do we approach this?' her mother's voice rings clear in her head. Coldly and unemotionally. Her father is an alpha, one she's spent far more time around than her own absent mate. His scent, the tone of his voice, the feel of his hands – they stir her omega senses and nothing more. It would happen with any alpha close enough.

All the same, her teeth clack hard when he does touch her, high on her thighs where the slick has reached again by now. Her mind lingering when her body is so eager is agony, and though she'd feared making a fool of herself when her father's fingers spread and searched, the moment brings only a brief and blissful relief. His palm is scorching low on her belly, sealing the magic from inside and out. It flares like a glowing coal in her womb for no more than a second and burns out, and then she is empty again, legs splaying further. As if she can invite him back in, to stay this time. 

It takes longer than she'd like for that thought to make her ashamed of herself, sick with what heat is doing to her. She'd worried about so much of being an omega – being at the mercy of an alpha she didn't choose, being tied and vulnerable to attack the way that so many alphas and omegas had been at their deaths for years. The others may shove off her worries, but she grew up with the portrait of a sorceress slain by dagger still atop her king's knot in a lesser-used hall of the east wing, and her careful research over the years had shown it to be historically accurate down to the last. Abuse, death, those she had feared for herself and fretted over at night when sleep wouldn't come. But feeling her heat crest under the touch of her father's hands... Allison hadn't been dreading that. She hadn't ever imagined she could stoop this low.

“Alright, Allison,” Melissa says, motherly and unaware. “That's straightened out. I'm going to wipe you up one last time and then we'll go outside and wait to let Stiles in. Okay?” She's swift and functional with her cool cloth this time, as if she's afraid to touch Allison's heat-sensitive body for too long. Allison can be grateful for that much, at least. “The room can supply you with food and water for when it eases up a little. Juice, if you can't manage eating just yet.” She dabs gently at Allison's forehead and offers her a hopeful smile. “Two days. Three days, tops. First heats usually burn themselves out pretty fast.”

The dirtied rags are tossed into the corner where the sweaty sheets had disappeared, and Allison wonders deliriously where they disappear to. Lydia had brought it up once, the morning after slipping in and out of Ravenclaw for reasons she wouldn't elaborate. Apparently, where Vanished objects go was not a tough enough riddle to keep out a Slytherin if that Slytherin was Lydia Martin. Her memory is too foggy to remember the way Lydia had spun out several theories, seemingly unaware that she was the one causing 'slipping into a coma bored' this time with her theoretical drone. Allison hopes they're gone for good, at the bottom of a lake or a volcano somewhere, and not just passed on to the house elves to wash out whatever stains she's left.

When they both move to leave, Allison's hand stretches for her father's as it slips away from her. The fear of being left alone here is primal and intense, and she's not sure if it's a heat instinct or her own bottomless panic and mixed emotions. He turns back, away from Melissa with her hand on the door.

“Daddy,” she says quietly, so soft that her scratchy throat feels nothing. Without the feedback loop of his touch, the strength gives out in her arm before long, hand dropping limply to the bed. Melissa looks apprehensive over her father's shoulder, but Melissa is a beta, and she doesn't understand. No matter how many omegas she's wiped down and temporarily sterilized, she can't know what this feels like.

She surprises Allison, though. “You can stay if you'd like. There's a provision for it in your contract. They haven't rewritten them in years, at least long enough that some omegas still had their alpha parent sit in. Passing from one alpha to another.” She makes a pinched face, like the thought is distasteful. “I can check the file with Satomi, but you're allowed at least the first day, maybe the full heat.”

Another history that Allison had read about thoroughly in the family library after hours. This one wasn't just royal, though; tons of families had overseen the first breeding of their young omegas. Making sure the heat was resolved, that the alpha was ready to take on their responsibilities. She doesn't know of any that have held onto it this long. At least, none that advertise it. She tries to imagine regal Talie Hale watching her son on his back for a Muggleborn alpha and fails. It's much easier to picture her in a year or two, sharp eyes observant as Cora deflowers the sweet Hufflepuff girl she'd been mated with in the ceremony. Making certain the line of Hale alphas are keeping up their reputation, making every omega within a year of them tremble with anticipation before the mating, hoping they might get lucky. Allison had wondered about Cora for a while. A Hale and an Argent had never been mated together, despite the strong pureblood lines running deep in both families.

But no, Allison had not been mated to Cora Hale, who is probably sleeping in her bed, frowning even as she dreams. She'd not been mated to Vernon Boyd, fourth alpha of his name. Allison had stood with her trembling hands shoved into the pockets of her robes and felt the tug of her magic escaping her body in the single mating strand, shimmering omega blue. Watched it twine with the vivid alpha red of Stiles Stilinski's. Neither of his parents were even on the books here at Hogwarts – Muggleborn mother and straight up Muggle father. Cheap robes, cheap broom that got no use since he hadn't actually made the Quidditch team any of the five times he'd tried out. The only things going for him were his marks, Os and scattered Es, mostly in Potions. It had been the only thing her father hadn't found fault with in his endless search for more to complain about.

Allison, for her part, wasn't so concerned with the money or notoriety. The only thing that stung there was the deep-down worry that her family might not want much to do with her once she wasn't really an Argent anymore. When she became a Stilinski and the reality of being an omega sunk in. Kate would be the next alpha in line after her father, now, and one of her kids after her. She'd get an inheritance, certainly, but nothing like what would fall to Kate and her omega. For now, though, that doesn't seem to matter. Her father nods at Melissa and retreats back to the seat behind her bed, gripping her hand like a lifeline, a tether to reality in a foggy world of sensation.

Stiles's voice makes its entrance first, just before his scent and before his body comes into view, shivering in palm tree-printed boxers and a shirt that bags down past his waist, swallowing him up. Allison doesn't feel a tug at her heart or hear a choir of angels singing, but her hips tense and her blood zips through her veins, fingers and toes tingling. Mate. Her mate is here. As nerve-wracking and ostentatious as the mating ceremony may be, the magic doesn't lie. Whatever it is that makes alphas and omegas compatible, she and Stiles have it in spades. A corner of her mind completely fizzles and drops away, the part of her that had worried she'd be let down, that after all this hell she'd feel nothing for him, the way so many omegas without magic struggle through, trial and error heats until they find someone who fits. Stiles fits.

Of course, he's sixteen years old, only a few months confirmed, and has just been woken up from what must have been a very eventful sleep. His hair, finally grown out, is sticking up in every direction, and he's wearing one sock. He's lucky he had that much; she imagines him flailing through the halls with both bare feet on the cold stone floors and thinks – no. Not my alpha. He'll catch cold. It's absurd; it's spring and that isn't her place. He's not her boyfriend. They barely know one another beyond what other people have said, and he has just as much right as Allison to back out of this before they mate, before they form a bond. 

“What the fuck,” he says flatly, eyes bulging when he registers Chris in the chair at Allison's bedside. “Sorry, Mr. Argent,” he mutters, but it's insincere. The last time he saw her dad outside of his class, he'd been shouting at the headmistress about pairing him with the year's spare omega and holding Allison over for a year. Of course, being nearly eighteen and therefore a full year late for being assigned a mate already, that was always out of the question. Jackson's provisional alpha papers had been signed by his best friend; he'd be the one held over to take a younger alpha. There aren't any strong pureblood line kids in the 5th year, so he's likely to be stuck with a guy. Allison had thought that might be a problem, with all the chasing Lydia he'd done, but Lydia had only given her a knowing smile and said, “I'll take 'bisexual' for 200, Alex.” Allison hadn't known who Alex was, and the conversation was over.

“It's not me you need to apologize to, Mr. Stilinski.” If the mister is a holdover from class or her dad following the silly rules laid down for acknowledging other alphas, Allison doesn't know. She didn't always think they were silly, but the second she knew she was an omega, that she had an even stricter, more ridiculous set of guidelines, she'd decided it was all obsolete. “That's no way to be speaking in front of an omega in need, especially not your bond-mate.”

“He's not my-”

“She's not my bond-mate,” Stiles chimes in. “Not until we-”

“Well, you're about to.” Her father's voice is brick and mortar, solidly unquestionable. The absurdity of it hits Allison all at once, redrawn cartoonishly in her head – a greying man shaking his finger at a quivering boy (it works better with Stiles's old hair, that childish barely-there cut that only the muggleborns really every had), spittle flying as he demands his daughter be fucked. She giggles, feeling dizzy with the air it takes from her. Stiles is looking at her like she's several sandwiches short of a picnic. “And soon. It's getting worse, and nothing's going to fix it except you.”

“Yeah, or any other alpha who smells good to her and can get it up.” He takes a couple steps closer, though, and Allison can see his eyes taking stock of the new sheets, already not so fresh. She should've asked Melissa if there would be new ones every time she tossed a set into the vanishing corner. “This is really the real deal? It's not even seventh year yet.”

His voice is nothing special, not deep or particularly appealing, but it makes Allison's toes curl. She squeezes her eyes closed and breathes. “I'm eighteen,” she admits. Not everyone knows. She was sorted in the same way everyone else was, didn't get mated a year early. Lydia celebrates her birthday obnoxiously every year, the same way she does with her own, but nearly everyone else is left in the dark, and Allison likes it that way. “And Madam McCall says sometimes omegas go into heat before they're even mated. Fifteen or sixteen.”

“Huh,” he says, tilting his head, and she can see the trail of beauty marks across his face, a path from mouth to ear, an invitation. Why aren't they having sex yet? Aren't alphas supposed to be nothing but dumb animals around an omega in heat? She'd had endless lessons at the empty dinner table, long lectures about how to discipline yourself and ignore primal urges – not just the sexual ones. Not always from her father and Kate, either; her mother always said she had 'a unique perspective' to offer on self-control, and Allison would have to agree. She'd had an incredible tolerance to pain, an unreadable face, a skill at lying that Allison was never sure whether to fear or envy. In the end, she'd been just as vulnerable to death as anyone else, but it hadn't seemed that way as a child. She'd seemed just as indestructible as Allison's alpha father, all-knowing and undying. Stiles looks like neither, especially with that look on his face, like he's trying to remember something important he's forgotten. “Never read that when I was trying to figure out what was up with me.”

This is the only thing about Stiles that Allison knows that can't be found on paper or heard through the rumor mill, so far. In the headmistress's office, with her father's veins bulging as if they might pop, Stiles had rambled on about how he'd been sure he was an omega, that he'd been sure Allison would be an alpha, just as everyone else had been. That he'd thought about her being his alpha, possibly, she'd been on the list – he could produce the list if need be, as some kind of proof, as some kind of defense against her father's tirade – but not at the top. She felt bad, the only one sitting down besides Headmistress Ito, dwarfed by the chair and silent in the growing noise. Stiles had considered her. She hadn't even known Stiles was there until she'd been mated to him.

“Doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter if she's twelve or forty, or what year of school it is. I don't think you're understanding the gravity of this situation, Mr. Stilinski.”

“Stiles. Don't, just. Stiles.” He flops onto the corner of the mattress and one of his hands ends up palm down against Allison's calf. She's hyper-aware of it, even with the fabric separating him. He's cooler than her, still, that's supposed to change. His fingers are long and thin, but not delicate. Not rough like her father's, either, gnarled and work-worn. Stiles has boyish hands grown to fit a man's body, getting him into too much trouble to be soft and careful but not yet asked to do so much that they ache or crack or peel. She wants them all over and inside, and he's just sitting there casually, like he has no idea that he's touching, and she starts to doubt the magic after all. What if she's responding to him and he doesn't want her?

Her father is focusing on Stiles's hand as well, brow creased. “Stiles, then. My daughter is in heat. Protection has been taken care of. I would think a boy such as yourself would be eager for this chance, heat or no.”

“I mean, excuse me for not popping a boner with another alpha hanging around. Especially my teacher who likes to give me Es instead of Os since he found out I'm going to be breeding his daughter.”

That feeling is surging in Allison's belly again, like being seasick. The arguing makes her want to hide somewhere, but her jelly legs probably wouldn't even carry her as far as the door. It's worse than it was with Melissa, alpha against alpha making her feel far more threatened than a beta refusing to back down. There's no question of who would come out on top here, and the parts of her still relying on logic and common sense know it, but something more instinctual thinks she should get the hell out of dodge before she gets caught in the crossfire. 

“The quality of your work declined, maybe because you've been thinking too much about breeding my daughter.”

Allison shivers. She's tucked her head under the sheet despite feeling as though she might suffocate on the thick air beneath it. Losing patience, her fingers trace the creases of her thighs, slippery and sensitive. Even that much feels daring after a year of tucking her hands under pillows or into her sleeves at night, deterring herself. She'd always been unashamed of taking care of her needs, throwing up a charm or two to keep her privacy and rubbing at her clit until her breath came sharp and quick. It was the only way she touched herself from the time she discovered it, but her sixteenth birthday came and went, and she noticed that her panties got soaked as well as her hand. And then it had been the sheets. She'd felt a gnawing hunger in her belly and a delicious ache that an orgasm or two didn't cure, and that's when she'd known. She'd known what she was and she stopped touching. She slides her fingers through her slick, and, needing the distraction and desperate for something more than this deprivation, pushes them inside where her father had been before.

They're still arguing outside the safety or her little blanket tent. Her fingers, two and then three, aren't enough, but they feel better than clenching on nothing. She only holds them there at first, squeezing, but when she squirms and they slip a bit, she shudders and can't stop herself. She's not sure how to move – how fast, what direction – and she's too anxious to spend time figuring it out, tilting her wrist and rocking her hand as fast and deep as she can manage. It's so loud, louder than her breathing, the wet sounds of her fingers reaching, trying to fill where she's already so open, nature's gift to omegas.

Her heat rises, more than a nuisance and less than a climax, and she hears herself whine as if from a distance. She knows better than this, getting frustrated when she can’t make herself come. She knows how heat works. Even Stiles’s hand on her calf isn’t enough contact with an alpha to give her any release. If she could come, it wouldn’t do much. Brief relief in the constant tide of heat seems so small in her mind. She doesn’t really want to come, doesn’t even want to be touching herself. She wants a knot, and both alphas in the room are more interested in arguing with one another than with getting her seen to.

It takes Stiles pulling his hand away for her to realize the sheet’s been tugged down. Not just enough that she can see them both standing over the edge of the bed when she opens her eyes, which she notices as the cool wind (inside?) tightens her nipples in the open air. Whatever shame she might have felt before today or even ten minutes ago is gone. Her hand against her cunt is still just barely hidden from view, and after a brief moment of shock, it’s moving again. She’s the only one who’s doing something here, and she isn’t planning on stopping.

“Do you see what you’ve done?” her father asks, but the fire has gone out of his voice. When she glances, he isn’t even looking at Stiles anymore. His eyes are fixed to a point near her navel, as if he doesn’t dare look any further up or down for fear of what he might see. It strikes her as familiar, and then it registers: Lydia leaning too far forward in class, top unbuttoned beneath the loose front of her robes. Her father’s one quick look and and pointed avoidance. He knows as well as Allison that Lydia isn’t actually trying to seduce him, just playing the part, but he’s human. He wants to look. Maybe he wants to look at Allison. Suddenly, three fingers is not enough even for a temporary fix.

“Please?” she asks, and she turns to Stiles, to the one who’s not looking away. He follows every move of her hand as her fingers slip free with a slick pop and trail up her stomach. He unapologetically ogles her breasts, slightly swollen and tender, when she palms at them. “Please stop fighting and help me.”

Stiles is surprisingly lean beneath the two sizes too big clothes. When she’d thought of him at all, she’d thought of him as skinny - not quite waifish, but someone who might have trouble carrying all of his books at once. His arms are sturdy, though, and she thinks she might want that body against hers even if she weren’t suffering right now. He has more hair just above the waist of his boxer than he does on his chest, and she’s honestly shocked he has either. There’s a lump in her throat that reminds her - alpha. Sixteen or not, his body is set on a system that has probably been dumping chemicals in his bloodstream faster than it can handle. More research - older omegas can cause their younger mates to mature more quickly to catch up to them. She’s been so caught up in the sickly practice heats, drowning in her own misery, that she hadn’t even considered what might be happening to Stiles as they sat on opposite sides of the room in shared classes, passed just close enough to touch in the Great Hall or a corridor. She is literally making a man of him.

He’s already promisingly hard beneath the cover of his underwear, but he pauses with his hands under the stretchy waistband. “Look,” he says, and it’s the same voice she hears when her father is buying in bulk in Diagon Alley. He’s trying to strike a bargain. “I’m going to do this. You can see that I’m going to do this.” He gestures at the door expectantly, snapping the elastic against his skin impatiently. “You can go. I’ll mate her. We’ll...yeah. Mates.”

For a man who was somewhat talked into staying, Allison’s father doesn’t seem ready to walk away. He’s still standing within reach at the head of the bed. His arms are folded across his chest, so Allison reaches for his thigh instead. Maybe her touch can reassure him as much as his had reassured her. “Either way,” she offers quietly, because she knows that’s what he’s considering. Whether she would want him to leave or stay. She’d been expecting for so long to be alone and in a new home somewhere, turned over and bred before she could even come fully awake, that this all feels bizarre and unsteady. She feels safer with her father, former Auror and the man who’s been in charge of protecting her for her entire life. He’ll feel better, too, knowing for sure she’s taken care of. 

He moves away from her touch and something threatens to rip inside her chest, to tear and spill out, but then he trains his eyes on Stiles and takes his seat again. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m perfectly within my rights. I’m her alpha until you’ve sated the heat.”

Stiles opens and closes his mouth a few times, silent and disbelieving, head turning this way and that as if he were watching a tennis match. Neither of the players budges, though, frozen in a moment as they wait for his decision. He takes a long, whistling breath in and plucks at his waistband one last time. 

“Fuck it,” he says, guiding it gently out and over his cock. “Here goes nothing.”

He doesn’t pile into the bed like she’d been expecting, balancing a knee at the edge of mattress and taking her by the wrist. She’s worried he’s about to try and romance her with pretty words or a kiss on the hand, but his thumb against her pulse is the best thing yet, more satisfying than trying to fuck herself with her fingers, deft with a bow but clumsy at this new pleasure. When he pulls her fingers into the wet heat of his mouth, her back arches clean off the bed. She can’t manage more than a thick-sounding, “Oh,” as he licks them clean. She can’t remember him touching her with intent before this - a friendly pat on the shoulder, a handshake, a high five - and now he is dragging his tongue between her fingers as if she had dipped them in his favorite dessert. 

She catches him looking off to the side for something, approval, a reaction, she doesn’t know. He must find whatever he wants. He carefully lowers her hand back to the bed and leans in, easy, none of his awkward bobbling. “Can I?” He asks, touching her just at the corner of her open mouth. It could be any of a dozen questions, or all of them in one. She nods anyway, and he kisses her.

This is more what she expected of him, clumsier, and she can tell he hasn’t done it before. It takes a few tries to slot their lips together in a way that fits, and another few before it feels anything approaching right. He doesn’t stop trying, is the thing; when he bumps her nose, he tilts and tries again. When he pauses to catch his breath, he doesn’t pull away, and he isn’t afraid to look her in the eye this close up. She notices for the first time that they’re paler than she’d thought, caramel-colored. The tiny voice that whispers about their future children’s brown eyes is squashed before it can finish its sentence. She leans into him and lets him try again, and again, and before she can think to take note of the shift, they are no longer trying. His mouth is plush and wet and swollen against hers like they’ve been kissing for hours rather than minutes, and she wants to feel it everywhere, but not now. This alone is more than she’d expected for a heat, especially her first. The fact that she’s not face down with an iron grip at her hips is both startling and soothing. She thinks, I got one of the good ones. She thinks, maybe they should make all the alphas believe they’ll be omegas.

His hands find her breasts, too big for the small curve of them, and splays the dip between thumb and finger against her ribs instead, thumbs reaching for her nipples. There must be some instinct to this, some internal guidebook leading him through the motions. He doesn’t even look to see where he’s going. One moment he’s kneeling over her and the next there’s nothing but the thin sheet separating them from the waist down. She never feels a pause in the kissing, or if she does, it’s overshadowed by his weight pressing down against her. 

“Yes.” It’s what she’s thinking, and for a moment she’s unsure why it’s come out all wrong, her voice distorted. Stiles jerks and turns his head - her mouth catches a mole as she eagerly leans up to give chase - to the chair a few feet from where they lay. “But we don’t have all day, son. You’ll have time to get a feel after. Neither of you will be going anywhere.” Beneath her hands - when had she started touching him? - she feels Stiles’s skin heat until it no longer feels cool against her overheated body. It’s taking him, too, now, winding him up before it lets him go and makes sure she gets what she needs. “Get her ready and go.”

Allison wants to protest. She is ready. She’s been ready since she came to in the hospital wing and felt the ache that threatened to consume her, and more than ready since she felt her father’s fingers sink deep, searching, wide and long enough to make her body shudder and expect to be bred right that second. She couldn’t get any more wet between her legs or anywhere else if she tried. Stiles follows his cue anyway, pupils blown as he watches her face for a sign that this is okay, his hand slipping beneath the sheet. His thumb glances off her clit, sliding where she’s gone too wet, and it’s a shocky pleasure-pain. Her body knows that feels good, that he’s touching just where she would want if this were another night alone behind the safety of her bedcurtains. It also knows she won’t be satisfied this way.

“Hmmmmm,” she tries, shaking her head and pressing her hips up, but he must take it as encouragement. He finds his mark again, traces a gentle circle, feeling out the new territory. Her legs twitch and a grin curls his bitten-red lips. She tries to bring her legs up around him, pull him back in and feel his body pinning her into the mattress again, but he seems eager to take on this new task, switching from a thumb to two fingers that make him steadier, more precise. Her jaw clenches against the intensity of it, too much and nothing at all, nothing of what she needs. “Stiles,” she tries again, hoping for his attention, for a search for her approval as well.

Her father clears his throat and Stiles snaps to attention, and something not unlike jealousy squirms in her belly. “Move the sheet.” The hesitation is a matter of moments this time, and then Stiles’s cock is bobbing mere inches from where she wants it to be. She can’t take her eyes from it, but a snorting sound comes from the direction of the chair. “Not like that. Later. Smart, but. Later.” 

“But-”

“I know. She’ll appreciate it another time. Look at her. Always look at her, look for what she wants.”

Allison feels small under Stiles’s gaze despite the way he flushes when he follows her line of sight down his own body, her hips lifting, seeking him out. The color comes low on his cheeks, uneven and bright pink, the same blood-rich color as the head of his cock. They’d feel hot under her tongue, she knows, hot and vital and she can feel the way that she’ll want it when she has room to. 

Gently, the two fingers framing her clit brush downward, tracing her lips, slow despite so much easing the way. He tests her with a single fingertip and gapes at her when he slips in to the knuckle with not even a little resistance. He tries again with two and she hums at him again, encouraging this time. He doesn’t fuck her with them. His fingers spread and rub, and she gets the strong suspicion that he’s feeling her up all over again, on the inside this time. He curls them and she feels her whole body go liquid, like the few bits that were resisting have given up and melted with the rest. Her mouth is open but she doesn’t know what’s coming out; her ears are filled with white noise. She thinks, finally.

She doesn’t know how much time passes before she loses that sweet feeling and opens her eyes to find Stiles almost too close for comfort. He rears back a bit, startled, and then grins. “Making sure you’re okay. Your dad says-”

“Yes,” she agrees, because her father has been pushing all along for what she needs. He got sidetracked along the way, but he wants to take care of her, to tell Stiles how he can do that. She squirms, convinces her arms to move again after a long moment, and rests her hands on his back, slipping a bit in the sweat that’s beading there. He’s here with her, not just near her but with her, diving into it, and she wants him. “Yes, come on, please.” It’s overdue. She needs him inside an hour ago, but a few seconds from now will have to do.

He casts one last wary look to her father - is his chair closer? - and fumbles to balance himself on one hand, taking the time to look this time as he guides himself. She thinks he misses, at first, before she realizes he’s rubbing himself against her, getting himself wet with her, and she’s shuddering through the pleasure of that thought when the head of his cock catches and then goes, one steady slide. Nothing else exists for a few beats, nothing beyond how solid and real he is where she's soft and open for him. Something is off, though, and she belatedly realizes he's holding his breath.

"Stiles," she whispers, scraping her nails against his back gently. “Hey. This is the easy part. Just move.” He shakes his head, and she can see how tight his throat is, adam’s apple bobbing. She can’t get any leverage to move with the way he’s lying on her and she panics a little before she remembers she has help. Her dad seems almost amused until he catches her looking. “Did I do something wrong?” she asks seriously, because she’s been asking him that for years. When he taught her to string her bow, when he taught her to fletch her own arrows, when he sat with her and practiced the ways she should speak to the alphas of the other old families like the Calaveras. Trial and error, watching his hands or peeking around corners as he discussed business, they all helped, but nothing so much as having him sit beside her and guide her hands, her words. 

It seems he remembers that’s how she learns best, at least. He rests his hands on his knees for a moment and then eases up from the chair. “No,” he answers her, gruff, and then he is touching Stiles, one of his hands bumping Allison’s near a shoulder and the other just peeking around a hip. The effect is immediate, Stiles gasping in air and shifting, pressing deeper inside Allison as he tries to escape the touch. “Now back,” her dad says, and she sees his grip tighten, tugging him along until he slips out just enough to push back in when he struggles again. “You’re thinking too much, kid. You’re an alpha. Your body knows what it’s doing.”

He stays, pushing and pulling a while longer, jerky stop-start that isn’t quite a rhythm, before he lets go. Allison feels like she’s boiling over, spilling outside of her own edges. Stiles presses his face into her neck and rocks into her, never pulling out enough to make her feel disconnected, adrift. His breath is hot and constant against her throat, apart from the way he smears his mouth against her skin from time to time - a taste or a kiss. It’s nothing like she’d imagined mating to be, doesn’t feel animal or uncontrolled. The want in her is still there, dialed down and content to wait for a little while, knowing it’ll be sated soon. She can imagine betas fucking this way, sweaty and close and driven by nothing but everyday desire. She can imagine fucking Stiles this way when she isn’t burning for a knot and she’ll keen for him instead of jolting when he plays with her clit.

After a while, she realizes he’s making noises, muffling them into her body like they’re something to hide from her. From her father, actually, who’s waiting and watching, one palm flat against Stiles’s back, gliding against his wet skin. She tugs at the hair at the back of his neck, hears his mouth leave her skin with a sound almost as obscene as the rest that their bodies are making. She kisses him, draws her free hand along his side and tries to enjoy him, to savor this clear head that may disappear as the heat spirals further because the breed won’t take, can’t leave her pregnant at the end of all of this. He chokes on a moan, and she echoes him, encouraging. For a little while she can pretend they’re doing this for fun.

She’s just beginning to think she might actually come, complete the illusion of this being less than what it is, when something feels wrong. Stiles’s gently rolling hips go sharp, punching little sounds out of her, making her breath catch. It doesn’t hurt, probably couldn’t with all of the signals in her brain lit up for ‘all systems go’, but it’s not right. His voice goes high and broken, and before she can ask what’s the matter, he’s blurting out apologies.

“I’m sorry,” he says, whisper ruined by the whine that follows on its heels. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I have to - I can’t.” He sounds genuinely pained, like he’s done something horrible that will need making up for. “I’ll get it next time, or…I don’t know, I’ll-” He jerks to a stop and Allison, for one horrifying moment, thinks he’s finished. He’s struggling again, though, and when she looks her dad’s hands are on his waist, grip so tight it may leave a mark if he keeps it up for long. “What are you doing?”

“Not yet.” Allison’s whole body is wracked with a chill at that voice, pure alpha authority, serious but not so distant as it had been. “If you come before you’re ready to knot, like a little boy, then we’ve accomplished nothing, have we?” Stiles wriggles anyway, trying to bury himself fully again, to get what must have been those last few seconds he needed. “Hold still and wait or this means nothing. The knot is what you’re good for, and without it, she’ll be sick with heat. So you’re going to sit tight.” He doesn’t let go, and eventually Stiles stills, realizes it’s not a joke. Allison tries to tighten up around him in consolation. It doesn’t work as well as it might have before tonight, but he pants and twitches like he’s touched a live wire. Her father gives her a stern look over his shoulder, and she frowns at him, hoping she looks chastised. She isn’t.

The wait lets the heat stoke itself up again, burning stronger though there’s nothing to fuel it. By the time Stiles can move again, Allison needs it, and for a few minutes everything is dizzying pleasure. Stiles’s chest heaves again, though, and she nearly cries this time, frustrated beyond words. Her hands slip into the sheets again, curling into fists.

“Touch her,” her father says, and Allison is shaking her head before Stiles can even lift a finger. She’ll combust if he tries to get her off right now, when she can feel him thick and promising inside but can’t enjoy it. Her dad’s hand finds her knee and he strokes her skin so, so gently, shushing her. “Not there. Her stomach, her breasts, her throat. It’ll hold it off a little longer.” Stiles obeys with trembling hands, clumsy again with need. He kneads at her breasts and tongues at the soft inside of her arm, her collarbones. 

They fall into a pattern this way, waiting and working, and Allison’s incoherent after the third or fourth time through. It’s too much to bear, having it given and taken away, but her father keeps rumbling into Stiles’s ear, telling him to wait, that he isn’t ready. She wants to ask how he knows, but her tongue is heavy in her mouth, and she’s scared to look at him too long, when he’s no longer avoiding looking at her. It gives her an uneasy feeling in her stomach but another entirely between her legs where Stiles pins her open. 

When her dad lets go of Stiles for the last time, she knows it’s the last. Neither of them can take it anymore, weak from the effort of holding back. The animalistic rutting she’d been waiting for finally makes its appearance, and she clings for all she’s worth, praying, begging. And still Stiles smears the sweat from his brow against her shoulder as he shakes his head and tells her he can’t, it’s just not there, and he can’t wait for it anymore. She digs her nails into his back and hopes it feels like punishment. It can’t be even a shadow of the way she feels. Deprived. Let down. His apologies grow louder, meant to carry to her father, and his eyes squeeze tight and Allison knows it’s going to be over.

A sharp crack echoes around the room and Allison jumps, frightened that someone’s apparated in despite Melissa’s reassurance. She can’t find anyone at first glance, though, and then she feels it. She tries to draw in air and can’t, her entire body centered on how fast it happens - the swell so sudden it’s almost painful, rubbing just where Stiles’s fingers had tapped before until he groans and collapses. There’s a tingle in her veins, washes of hot and cold that she’s too aware of, like she can feel the chemicals in her blood making their way around her body. Her cunt is pulsing, not like an orgasm, but like an echo of Stiles’s heartbeat in the fat knot she’s stuck on. Bred. 

She does cry this time. It’s silent, and the tears are probably indistinguishable from the rest of the sticky, glistening body fluids all over her. The relief is so immense. She can breath again, head pleasantly warm and floaty instead of that peaked heat feeling of being about to explode. She lets herself weep for a while, clinging and feeling Stiles’s weight on top of her, just as pleasant as it had been before. His breathing steadies over time and before long she feels him kissing up the side of her neck to her ear, across to her mouth. They kiss just once, sharing their gratitude.

When she can finally register the world outside the two of them again, she notices her father back in his chair, hands gripped tight around its armrest, as if they were tied there. She smiles at the memory of learning knots with him, watching him escape from them without his wand like a Muggle magician. He’s not smiling, though, and she notices he’s dressed. Not in his night clothes, like he had been before, but in his robes. Melissa had meant what she said about the room providing.

“You’re alright,” he says when their eyes meet, and she can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement. She nods at him. “You’ll both be fine from here on. You won’t...it doesn’t have to be the knot, every time. So if he gets tired and can’t, you’ll be okay. You hear that?” Stiles licks his lips and nods but doesn’t look to see her father’s face. “It’ll come easy now, whenever you’re ready for it. Won’t need me to kickstart you.” 

Stiles’s blush is furious, and he slumps again, excusing himself from making eye contact. Allison doesn’t quite understand, but she pets at his matted hair and wonders how long it will be before the pleasant warmth in her belly spreads and heightens again. She’s hoping it will be awhile. Her father kisses her on the forehead before he goes, and the light in the hall lets her know that the night is over. A nap might be in order while they’re both calm enough for it.

She doesn’t find the handprint until much later, just barely pink and blending at the edges into Stiles’s always rosy skin. He flinches a bit at her touch, not pained but embarrassed, and she feels herself go liquid again, a need triggered by more than the heat. There will be a lot to work out after the next three days, Allison knows. For now, she shoves at Stiles’s hip until he’s flat on his back and straddles him, smiling. She wants to be able to tell her father how well he took care of her.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a super isolated incidence of spanking (as in, one smack) that isn't meant to be punishment or humiliation in any way.


End file.
